Blockchain

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released Draft NISTIR 8202, Blockchain Technology Overview, a straightforward introduction to blockchain, which underpins Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
The publication is intended to provide a high-level technical overview of blockchain...

Singapore Airlines is set to launch what it termed a “world-first blockchain-based airline loyalty digital wallet capability” to allow its KrisFlyer membership base to use "digital KrisFlyer miles" for point-of-sale transactions at participating retail merchants.
This digital wallet app for...

A.P. Moller - Maersk and IBM on Tuesday announced their intent to establish a joint venture to provide what they termed as “more efficient and secure” methods for conducting global trade using blockchain technology.
The aim of the new company...

Australia’s ASX Ltd said Thursday it would replace CHESS using distributed ledger technology (DLT). CHESS (Clearing House Electronic Subregister System) is the system used by ASX to record shareholdings and manage the clearing and settlement of equity transactions in...

Bloq, a U.S. blockchain technology company, on Monday announced the upcoming launch of Metronome (MTN), which it called “the world’s first cross-blockchain cryptocurrency.”The cryptocurrency is expected to launch in early December 2017.
According to Bloq, Metronome’s cross-blockchain capability uses a...

Payments Canada, the Bank of Canada and TMX Group on Tuesday announced a new collaboration to experiment with an integrated securities and payment settlement platform based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) as part of the third phase of the...

J.P. Morgan said Monday it has launched a new payments processing network based on blockchain technology. The financial services firm is partnering with Royal Bank of Canada and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited on the Interbank Information...

Nasdaq and Nordic financial services group, SEB said Wednesday they are collaborating on a project to test a developed prototype for a mutual fund trading platform based on blockchain technology.
The aim is to increase efficiency in the processing of...

Enterprise software firm R3 said Tuesday it has collaborated with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), RBS and another major global bank to build a prototype application for regulatory reporting of mortgage transactions on R3’s Corda distributed ledger technology (DLT)...

Consultancy EY said on Wednesday it is set to deploy the “world’s first blockchain platform for the marine sector,” in collaboration with data security firm Guardtime, Microsoft and ship operator Maersk .
The blockchain platform is built on Microsoft Azure...

IBM said Wednesday that Sony Corporation and Sony Global Education, a subsidiary of Sony that works to provide global educational services, have developed a new blockchain-based student education records platform.
With the solution, school administrators can consolidate and manage students'...

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced the Coco Framework, "a first-of-its-kind innovation" that will advance enterprise adoption of blockchain technology.
Current blockchain protocol technology requires complicated development techniques to meet the operational and security needs of enterprises. The Coco Framework reduces...

Blockchain technology company The Bitfury Group said Friday it is collaborating with Insilico Medicine, Inc., a Baltimore-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) and bioinformatics company, to develop "novel" solutions for healthcare applications using Blockchain technology.
Both companies signed a memorandum of understanding...

Hyperledger, a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology, announced on Tuesday the general availability of Hyperledger Fabric 1.0. Hosted by The Linux Foundation, Hyperledger Fabric is a blockchain framework implementation and intended as a foundation for developing...

London-based startup Blockchain, a leading software platform for digital assets, announced last week that they have raised a Series B of $40 million with Lakestar and GV (formerly Google Ventures) with additional participation from Nokota Management and Digital Currency...

The General Services Administration (GSA) is currently seeking contractor support to develop a proof of concept for Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). This is according to a Request for Quotation (RFQ) issued by the agency.
Additionally, the GSA is also seeking...

Blockchain technology company, The Bitfury Group, and Risk Cooperative, an insurance advisory firm, announced on Friday that they have entered into what they termed “a strategic partnership” to pioneer Blockchain applications in the $60 billion insurance intermediation market.
The Bitfury...

TMX Group announced Wednesday the development of a blockchain-based prototype to power a new service offering from Natural Gas Exchange (NGX), a wholly-owned subsidiary of TMX Group.
NGX collaborated with Nuco Inc., a digital infrastructure provider, to build a new...

Nasdaq and Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions announced Monday a new integrated payment solution that enables straight through payment processing and automates reconciliation by using a distributed ledger to record and transmit payment instructions.
A number of payment transactions have...

Blockchain consortium R3 said Tuesday it has completed the first two of three tranches in its Series A fundraising round, securing USD 107 million in the world’s largest distributed ledger technology (DLT) investment to date.
R3 is the largest consortium of...

Toyota Research Institute (TRI), a wholly owned unit of Toyota Motor North America, said Monday it is collaborating with MIT Media lab and several industry partners to explore blockchain and distributed ledger technology (BC/DL) for use in the development...

Healthcare API company PokitDok announced last week that it has selected the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Sawtooth as its premier platform for recording DokChain healthcare transactions. Hyperledger Sawtooth is an open source blockchain project contributed by Intel.
DokChain is PokitDok’s implementation...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has awarded $9.7 million to 12 small businesses for 13 Phase II contracts through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
Three of the companies received approximately $2.25 million for...

Australia is making strides towards establishing itself as a leading global financial technology (FinTech) hub and, recently announced a new package aimed at positioning its local FinTech industry as a world leader. To that effect, the Australian government will...

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said Monday it has developed what it termed a “world-leading Cryptocurrency Investigation Train-the-Trainers course,” and delivered, in recent weeks, the first courses on cryptocurrency investigation.
This is in response to the...

IBM said Tuesday it is joining forces with TenneT, sonnen and Vandebron to develop blockchain technology for managing the electricity grid in the Netherlands and Germany.
This innovative technology is the next step in enabling decentralized flexible energy sources to...

The Bitfury Group, a full service Blockchain technology company, said last week The State Agency for eGovernance of Ukraine signed what it described as “a groundbreaking first-ever Memorandum of interaction and cooperation to create the first full-scale Blockchain eGovernance...

Britain's Royal Mint and Chicago-based exchange CME Group Inc are testing a new platform for trading gold based on blockchain technology. RMG (Royal Mint Gold), is a digital gold product created by The Royal Mint and CME Group.
CME Group...

Fidelity Labs, the R&D and Innovation unit of Fidelity Investments, said Monday it is the first in the financial services industry to join faculty members at Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the...

IBM, Natixis and Trafigura have pioneered the first blockchain solution in commodity trade finance for US crude oil transactions, IBM announced Tuesday.
The distributed ledger platform, built on the Linux Foundation open source Hyperledger Fabric, allows major steps in a...

Business software and cloud services company SAP has joined Hyperledger, a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology.
The company plans to utilize blockchain in existing and new business scenarios for enterprises, and will implement blockchain across its portfolio,...

KPMG International and Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday the launch of joint Blockchain Nodes, which they said are designed to “create and demonstrate use cases that apply blockchain technology to business propositions and processes.”
The KPMG and Microsoft Blockchain Nodes will...

BTL, a blockchain solution provider, said Tuesday it is working with a group of leading energy companies, including Wien Energie GmbH, Austria's largest regional energy company, on a blockchain pilot using BTL's Interbit platform.
According to BTL, the goal of the...

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) on Thursday announced the launch of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, a bipartisan Caucus which they say will be dedicated to the advancement of sound public policy toward blockchain-based technologies and digital...

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on Wednesday issued a report that discusses the use and implications of DLT in the securities industry. The paper also seeks comments as part of an effort to obtain feedback on any challenges...

Global interbank messaging organization SWIFT said Thursday it is launching of a Proof of Concept (PoC) to explore whether distributed ledger technology (DLT) can be used by banks to improve the reconciliation of their nostro databases in real time,...

IBM Watson Health said Wednesday it has signed a research initiative with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aimed at defining a secure, efficient and scalable exchange of health data using blockchain technology.
IBM and the FDA will explore...

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, said Monday that it has selected IBM, in partnership with Axoni and R3, to provide a distributed ledger technology (DLT) framework...

France's BNP Paribas said Wednesday it has processed several live payments for two of its longstanding corporate clients, Amcor, a provider of packaging solutions and Panini Group, an international dealer in collectibles and trading cards.
BNP Paribas successfully utilized blockchain technology to process...

The U.S. Federal Reserve has published a paper on distributed ledger technology titled, Distributed Ledger Technology in Payments, Clearing, and Settlement.
The paper analyzes the growing popularity of digital finance, also referred to as fintech, with an emphasis on distributed...

IBM has affirmed it's faith in the ability of Blockchain to transform the way industries conduct business transactions. This will require a complete ecosystem of industry players working together, allowing businesses to benefit from the network effect of blockchain,...

The Central Bank of Sweden is contemplating the implementation of a national digital currency as a complementary service to counter a decline in the use of physical cash in the country.
Cecilia Skingsley, the Deputy Governor of Riksbank, Sweden's central...

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said Wednesday that it is partnering with R3, a Blockchain technology company, and a consortium of financial institutions on a proof-of-concept project to conduct inter-bank payments using Blockchain technology.
The project could potentially avail...

Chain, a provider of blockchain technology solutions, on Monday released Chain Core Developer Edition, a free and open source version of its distributed ledger platform that enables organizations to issue and transfer assets on permissioned blockchain networks.
Visa recently said...

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (Commonwealth Bank), Wells Fargo and Brighann Cotton said Monday they have undertaken what they called “the first global trade transaction between two independent banks combining the emerging disruptive technologies of blockchain, smart contracts and Internet...

Financial innovation company R3 and twelve of its consortium member banks have trialed Ripple’s distributed financial technology and the potential for its digital asset to scale liquidity and reduce the costs and inefficiencies of interbank cross-border payments, the company...

Dark web data intelligence provider Terbium Labs and Skry, a leading blockchain analytics and intelligence company, said Wednesday they have partnered to help financial institutions, law enforcement and Bitcoin companies quickly detect fraud and investigate criminal activity on distributed...

IBM on Monday unveiled a $200 million USD investment in the new global headquarters for its Watson Internet of Things (IoT) business in Munich.
The company is exploring new IoT capabilities around Blockchain and security and an array of clients...

Texas-based Factom, Inc., a blockchain technology company that secures data via decentralization, said Wednesday that it has raised $4.2m in a Series A round of funding led by Tim Draper of Draper Associates.
The Series A round of financing enables Factom...

Two new IBM studies conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) show that commercial blockchain solutions are rapidly being adopted throughout banking and financial markets, dramatically faster than initially expected.
The studies are: "Leading the Pack in Blockchain...

The Chamber of Digital Commerce and technology incubator 1776 have partnered to launch the DC Blockchain Center to serve as Washington, DC’s entrepreneurial resource for technology providers and governments investing and innovating in blockchain-based technologies, the Chamber of Digital...

Microsoft Corp. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are collaborating on blockchain technology to fuel transformation of trade finance transacting.
The two multinationals made the announcement Tuesday at Sibos, an annual conference organized by SWIFT for the financial industry.
As part...

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday announced the creation of a Congressional Blockchain Caucus dedicated to the advancement of sound public policy toward cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based technologies.
“Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial services industry,...

Not willing to be left out of the growing frenzy surrounding blockchain technology, IBM announced Friday that it is partnering with Chinese credit card company, China UnionPay to enable the sharing of loyalty bonus points among banks with the...

Seven buy-side and sell side firms, including AB (Alliance Bernstein), Citi, Credit Suisse and HSBC, announced Monday that they have collaborated with financial innovation companies R3 and Axoni to explore how blockchain technology could simplify reference data processes.
Reference data...

A federal judge issued a ruling on Monday, in the case of affirming that Bitcoin qualifies as money. This decision is linked to a criminal case over hacking attacks against JPMorgan Chase & Co and other companies, reports Reuters....

French multinational bank and financial services company, BNP Paribas Securities Services, said Monday it is expanding its blockchain platform for private stocks to help private companies issue minibonds via crowdfunding platforms.
The bank is working in partnership with renewable energy...